sisters

I grew up feeling surrounded by men. I wanted to play soccer, and there weren't enough girls for an all girls team so I played with the boys. Most of my friends, the really good ones, were boys throughout my life. Not to mention that in my house it was me and two brothers and a dad who really geared things towards male-ness. It was a land of Legos, Star Wars, and football. The best way to keep up with the pack was to find out what was interesting about football, be up for a hike, and genuinely want to watch Harrison Ford movies. It was important to my father that I be involved in a sport (though once my brothers started playing football, no other sporting event compared), be analytical, and bond with him by watching sci fi and action movies.

Now, to be clear, there are some women who genuinely like those things. I am not sexist (and I now have genuine affection for those activities for other reasons). I do think that while men and women should have equal opportunities, equal does not mean same. Let me offer a simple example to help illustrate what I am saying. We all have probably noticed that when there are lines for the bathroom, the line for the men's room is shorter. Men and women pee differently for obvious reasons, allowing more men to efficiently get in and out of the bathroom. Most facilities offer the same number of receptacles (in the men's room this is the number of urinals plus toilets, in the women's room just the number of toilets/stalls) in the two different gendered bathrooms. This is a case where equality was measured as absolute value, as in giving men and women the same number of something. another way to measure it would be to give women MORE toilets since it takes us more time to get in and out.

Beyond "equipment" and logistics (it was so much easier for my brothers to pee when we hiked!), I think it's safe to say that while men and women need to be valued equally, and not pigeon-holed, we are not the same. Statistically speaking we don't live the same number of years, we benefit from activities unequally (e.g. statistically speaking, men benefit more from heterosexual marriage than women do - and I have more sources than I have space for links. So, Rick Santorum notwithstanding, marriage which is TRADITIONALLY considered to be the place where men and women come together for common purposes doesn't result in common good, necessarily) and in the end, what convinces me most is that our psyches are measurably different. Our development is different, and even in cases of abnormal psychology, two people may have the same diagnosis but if one is male and the other female, the processes of their disease or disturbance are statistically likely to be different from one another.So, I grew up feeling a bit of being an outsider, and with good reason. Boys and girls, men and women, aren't the same.

Yes, I had a mother, but in terms of my closest friends and enemies (otherwise known as siblings) I was the only girl. It seemed simple enough, but as my family history is complicated, that was only the surface. As it happens, I had a half-sister out in the world, 7 years older than me. She had her sister that she grew up with (and they had no idea of the daddy-drama behind the scenes so in their minds they were and are just sisters). As families got shuffled and remarried there was also a half brother, and two step sisters and a step brother as well - the family bonding being of much greater importance than the labels. And through all of this, they may have even more cousins than I do (and as my mom was one of six I have a LOT of cousins). So, by extension through my sister (after we both helped our parent to die, and helped each other through that, halfness became very uninteresting to us; I simply refer to her as my sister now) I have a sister-once-removed (my half-sister's half sister) whom I adore, and have recently met their other sisters (step sisters).

My sister is enamored with planning sister weekends, once a year if she can. The first was when she brought her sister to Colorado to meet me. Then last year, and I couldn't go because it was shortly after my knee surgery. Now this year was planned with sisters of all varieties and cousins and friends too in Seattle. It has been a weekend filled with sisterly love. And here is what I have learned:

• Purse, shoe, and hat envy are real
• There can never be enough conversations about who is wearing what for the day's fun activity and why they chose it
  
• Talk about sex, men, dates, and husbands can happen at any time
• Pedicures are common 
• Once the talk about breasts and bras starts, who knows where it ends
  
• Woe betide those who don't travel with hairspray, curling irons, and/or a blowdryer (I get out of the shower and shake my curls out and that's it so the combined hair-effort was STUNNING)
• Sisters really do walk around in towels, robes, and underwear! Not just in the movies!
• Personal space is expressed by letting you take a shower with the door closed and without someone else coming in (and even this was a respect accorded to me more than others since I was still a "newbie"). Sharing is for things as personal as plates of food and hairbrushes. Affection is expressed by piling 5 women on one bed.

I'm sure this comes off as me picking only the stereotypical elements of female bonding. But for me, these were some of the standouts. I grew up where I had to fight for personal grooming time in a bathroom that I shared with gross boys (I kept my towel in my room for many years because the prospect of them mistaking my towel for theirs was so disgusting). I shared gel with my brothers. Roughhousing and wrestling were more common than hugs and compliments on clothes. Still today, one of my brothers greets me by slinging my arm across his shoulders and picking me up - fully, bodily, lifting all of me off of the ground and then lightly tossing me up and down a couple of times. Nobody cared what kind of purse I had, and even today I don't own a curling or straightening iron! And because I was a "young lady" as my southern father put it, modestly was important. There wasn't a lot of wandering around in undies.

To say that I felt like I had entered a strange new land is an understatement.

But there are other things to say too. Like, it is nice to be cooking in the kitchen and have your sisters actively come to you and say, "What can I do to help?" or even better to have one be open and self-aware enough to say, "I need some time to relax for a few minutes but then I AM coming to help." Also, the freedom of being able to share openly and discuss things like our families' tangled pasts, or the differences in our upbringings was a welcome and astounding contrast for me, compared to discussions of working out and jobs with my brothers. I like both conversations for different reasons but talking about who we are and why feels . . . more personal. Finally, my brothers love me, and I them. Deeply and unquestionably. (Don't mess with my brothers!) But the relationship is one of good-natured teasing and competition. The relationships of these women was one where they could say, "I'm so proud of you," or "I think your kids are amazing. " The way love and support and encouragement were given freely and authentically was eye-opening for me. There were lots of hugs and kisses, and yes, some teasing, but lots of understanding and acceptance as well.

Luckily, I've had some prototpyical sisters along the way. Early in my life, my Aunt and cousin lived with us for a short while. I was pretty sure my own personal role model had moved in. I just had to grow up and be exactly like my extremely smart, funny, interesting, and quircky cousin. Even after they moved out, she was the cousin I saw the most and looked up to. Then fast forward through high-school and college (where again the vast majority of my friends were men) until I met my friend, and for two years, roomate in grad school. She was an oldest sister and had a sister. Living with her was my first opportunity to to practice being a little sister. I was a couple of years behind her in the grad program and she knew her way around the department, the town, and life better than I. It was nice to not have to know what to do at all times. Her music was cooler than mine and she cooked (and still does) like a goddess. I believe you've already heard about the wonders of waking up to fresh coffee each day while I lived with her. I think back to this now as being the practice run of learning how to be a little sister. Once my own sister was in the picture, we had to not only learn about each other, but negotiate our position in the family, since we both had grown up as the oldest child.

For the past 4 days being in a house with all of the other sisters has taught me, really, what I missed as a child. I didn't just miss knowing my sister as I grew up, but knowing her family too. I missed having a gaggle of young women who became young adults and now thirty-somethings to learn from. When I was called upon to help with curling the back of the hair of my sister-once-removed I punted and had to hand off the curling iron to my sister because I don't know how to use it! I wonder what else I don't know?


I also missed some essential understandings between women, because I was surrounded by athletic men and was the oddball who wanted to swim, but wanted to sing, read, and direct plays more. My sister, and her sister, and all of their sisters are fit, trim, healthy looking women. They are wonderful people on the inside, and beautiful people on the outside. They all tell each other how pretty they are, how nice they look, and compliment each others' best features. Of course my parents did this for me, of course they did. (Though, how that happened in my house may be the subject of another post some time) But most of us, I think, have some difference of hearing when it comes from our parents. Even as an adult, there's an internal editor that seems to re-arrange the words coming out of my mother's mouth. Growing up, surrounded by brothers and friends-who-were-boys well . . . the competition for positive feedback was fierce. I couldn't run very fast, lift more weights, make a tackle or a touchdown that won the game. I think most of us listen to our peers more purely because we believe that they meet us where we are at and know what matters to us since they are closer to our own situation in life. Who is a closer peer than your siblings - not only closer in age but possessed of special knowledge of your family and household? And the feedback from my brothers had nothing to do with how I looked (unless I was going through a phase where I tried particularly hard to look weird - and there were a few). I heard praise and support when I . . . did something they wanted me to do or won a swim meet.

I wonder how I would feel about myself and understand myself differently if the sibling teasing me and irritating me and borrowing my things without asking had also been telling me I was pretty? I wonder if my insides would know better how to receive that compliment now? I'm not sorry I had brothers, and love mine with serious fierceness but women are different.

I will tell you that despite the fact that my sisters are gorgeous, as are their sisters, they all are prone to saying what they don't like about themselves. Their skin, hair, how their butt looks in a specific pair of shorts, the size of their chest, etc. Maybe what I would have learned is that these feelings of insecurity about who I am are normal. Maybe I would have learned different ways to process and move through those feelings. Maybe I would have learned the feeling of being healed by being loved by someone who is like me even in the hardest moments of not loving myself.

Whatever the case, I am glad to have had a long weekend to spend with them, as well as some time to spend with my prototypical big-sister-cousin now. Another day in Seattle - impossible to know how much coffee and walking await!

p.s. no sisters, men, or marriages were harmed in the making of this post. Furthermore, while marriage has traditionally been defined as being between a man and woman, even the most cursory view of my Facebook page will tell you that one of the only topics that will get me frothing at the mouth politically is the questions of whether or not my friends can get married. I want to be at all of their weddings - all of 'em!